Best practices with Voting Bots

September 3rd, 2007 by Michael Gray in Grayhat SEO

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Sometimes I see things that make me shake my head and wonder who’s at the wheel. If you’re running an automated voting bot, you want to use it just enough to nudge your story onto the homepage. Keeping it running after that is dangerous and just plain stupid. Letting it run to the point where your story has more votes than a story about a senator who resigns after being involved in an alleged sex scandal, is sure to raise a few eyebrows and draw some attention … probably not something you want to do

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5 Responses to “Best practices with Voting Bots”

  1. Jonathan Street Says:
    September 3rd, 2007 at 11:47 am

    The same can be said for comment bots. Most of the comments just scream spam.

    Would the following really be so difficult, “Thanks for posting that, it’s really interesting. I’m going to write about this on my *insert generic erectile dysfunction drug* website?”

    Instead we get, “*INSERT GENERIC ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION DRUG* PHARMACY. CHEAP *INSERT GENERIC ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION DRUG*. BUY *INSERT GENERIC ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION DRUG* NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ONLINE!”

  2. Lincoln Says:
    September 4th, 2007 at 7:01 pm

    Inquiring minds would like to know how one can find and use a voting bot. :-)

  3. Michael Gray Says:
    September 4th, 2007 at 7:54 pm

    The one’s I’ve seen are closely guarded internal tools, not for sale. They are buggy and tempermental, but once you’ve seen one in action spotting it’s “tracks” is child’s play.

  4. Cygnus Says:
    September 5th, 2007 at 7:05 pm

    You gotta love sock puppet armies; at times I find the stories popping truly more interesting just based on the efforts used to get them ranking.

  5. Lincoln Says:
    September 5th, 2007 at 7:56 pm

    I don’t know how anyone could not go insane trying to keep track of all their sock puppet accounts, and in order for it to be useful on a site like Digg you’d have to have at least a 100.

    I hate social networking. It reminds me of high school and its caste system of got-its and don’t-got-its. :-P